Two
poems from Daniel Groves's The Lost Boys
followed
by a note on the author
A
Dog's Life
A stay of execution: one last day,
your day, old Everydog, then, as they say,
or as we say (a new trick to avoid
finalities implicit in destroyed),
you have to be put down, or put to sleep –
the very dog who, once, would fight to keep
from putting down, despite our shouts, a shoe
until he gnawed it to the sole, and who
would sit up through our sleepless nights to bark
away some menace looming in the dark.
Can
you pick up the sense of all this talk?
Or do you still just listen for a walk?
Or else, the ultimate reward, a car? –
My God, tomorrow's ride… Well, here we are,
right now. You stare at me and wag your tail.
I stare back, dog-like: big and dumb. Words fail.
No more commands, ignore my monologue,
go wander off. Good dog. You're a good dog.
And you could never master, anyway,
the execution, as it were, of Stay.
Goodbye
The word enacts
what it contracts:
in parting, we
join God with ye
in the same breath,
as if (since death
or exile occasion
this blessed union) –
at a loss-to dictate
a better fate
(though body, ego
arrange it so),
to not confess
our separateness.
But what is lost
may yet be glossed –
e, w,
i, t, h – through
wit, he looks back,
an elegiac,
self-conscious he,
grieving history
(till bid his own
goodbye), alone.
And what is gained
may be explained –
another o –
but does it show
an eternal circle
or perfect nil?
End, restart
play counterpart,
just as goodbye
would rectify
what has also
gained an o –
the living hell
our words foretell
in greeting when
we meet again.
©
Daniel Groves was born in Wakefield, RI, in
1977, and educated at Johns Hopkins University. He lives in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his poems have appeared in the
Paris Review, the Sewanee Theological Review,
Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry, Smartish
Pace, and Best New Poets 2005 (Samovar and Meridian).
"A
Dog's Life" first appeard in Poetry, and "Goodbye"
first appeard in the Yale Review.
